It seems like Danish assessment about high sustainment costs for EF Typhoon was pretty much correct. 30-40 percent reduction in flight hour cost is really needed and I wonder why it took so long time to happen?

UK-specific initiatives already introduced via the Tytan contract include increasing the intervals between scheduled major maintenance activities, which will increase aircraft availability and reduce repair bills. Deep maintenance initially scheduled after every 400 flight hours has previously been extended to a 500h interval, and is expected to be stretched further to 750h.

Now in an advanced stage of assessment before being adopted, the "fundamental changes" will "stop things being taken apart, parts being consumed and people's time being consumed on maintenance activity that is not necessary under the current regime", Boardman says. This will involve industry taking "more risk and accountability" on required service intervals and parts ordering

I really hope this is because BAe found out, after years of accumulating data, that stretching maintenance intervals almost twofold is safe and that initial instructions were too conservative. Because it recently turned out that British military is in much shabbier shape money-wise than I though; so I hope they are not cutting safety corners at peoples' expense in order to save money.

It looks like the Senate Appropriation committee will cut the "extra" F-35As authorized in the 2018 NDAA, while retaining the additional four F-35Cs (two for the Navy, and two for the Marines,) and four F-35Bs. The committee also will retain all 10 extra Super Hornets. This probably is in reaction to the woeful state of tactical naval aviation assets.

The funny (and quite frankly sad) thing is that the FY2018 F-35B/Cs will arrive 8 months before the FY2018 F-18s. If they REALLY wanted to fill the "gap"' rather than their reelection coffers, they would buy more F-35s.

maus92 wrote:It looks like the Senate Appropriation committee will cut the "extra" F-35As authorized in the 2018 NDAA, while retaining the additional four F-35Cs (two for the Navy, and two for the Marines,) and four F-35Bs. The committee also will retain all 10 extra Super Hornets. This probably is in reaction to the woeful state of tactical naval aviation assets.

LOL!I used that same video when discussing with a fellow Canadian in another forum (with me defending the F-35 and the other guy attacking it with all the usual criticism claims).When I posted that same video and I even told him that when watching it, everytime the world "F/A-18" came up in the video that he should try to mentally replace it with the "F-35" word instead.

Obviously like many (actually most) of discussions around the web (including some here in f-16.net) the guy completely ignored the video and continued with his ramblings